Not Making the Money you Want? It Could Be Your Values…

Not Making the Money you Want? It Could Be Your Values…

There was a business man and he had amassed a fortune that amounted to three million pounds of gold dollars. And he decided that he would take a year off from work and live the kind of luxury that his wealth allowed him to. But no sooner had he made this decision than the angel of death beckoned him. Now, the man, who was a skillful negotiator, tried every argument he could think of to dissuade the angel and to buy himself more time. But the angel of death was adamant the man’s time had come. In final desperation, the rich man made the angel and offer. Give me three more days of life and I will give you a third of my wealth. A million pounds of gold dollars. The angel refused. Give me two more days of life and I will give you two thirds of my wealth. Two million pounds of gold dollars. The angel refused again. Give me one more day of life to enjoy this beautiful and bountiful planet and to spend a little time with my family who I have neglected for too long and I will give you all of my wealth. Three million pounds of gold dollars. But the angel cannot be persuaded. Finally, the man asked if the angel would grant just one little wish, just time to write a short paragraph and this wish was granted...

Now let’s talk about values. What are values? Well, simply put, values are what is most important to you. They’re simply what’s important. Values dictate not only what’s important to you but what motivates you. What motivates you, and what demotivates you. And values determine what you do. What we do day to day, what we don’t do, what actions we take, what actions we don’t take.

Now, you see, a lot of people, talk about values. And I’ve been to a lot of seminars and workshops where they talk about values and the importance of knowing your values in your business. What are your core values, they might say. Or what are your company’s core values? Well, see, the problem with that process is that the way they do it is extremely conscious. It’s a conscious process. That would be totally fine except that values are deeply unconscious.

And I’ve been through those processes before and I can tell you that once I really understood values, deep values, and I had my real values elicited, they looked nothing like what I thought they were going to be.

Maybe you’ve been to a seminar like that, or a workshop where they talk about values and and they hand you a piece of paper or they tell you to take out your notebook and they might say something like, “Write down your core values.” And everyone writes down these things that sound really nice. I mean, I know that’s what I did. I wrote down things that I thought they were true. And I wrote a list of values that sounded really good. And sounded like things that I would want to be values for my business.

And we have values for every context of our lives. You have a set of values for your career, and you have a set of values for relationships, and a set of values for your family. A set of values for health, a set of values for personal development. And the list can go on and on. In fact, you have values in every aspect of your life that you can think of and you also have life values. Life Values are values that govern over your whole life.

So maybe you’re wondering, “how can I use this?”

Let’s say you’re in business and you’re not making a lot of money. And then we elicit your values and money is way at the bottom of the list. That’s another important thing you need to know about values. The ones that are at the top, those are the most important values. And when we discover your values, we also discover the values hierarchy, or simply put, the level of importance. So, value number one, that is the most important that governs over everything. And two and three are also really important. Number four and five are pretty important. And then it goes down from there. And as we get further and further down the values hierarchy, they become more like subsets of the top values. So, the top ones really dictate your behaviour.

So, let’s say you’re in business and you’re not making the money you want but money is way down the bottom of your hierarchy. And this was the case with me. Back when I started working with my coach. I wasn’t seeing the kind of money I wanted in my business. So he elicited my values and money was way down the list and he said “well, this is why you’re not making any money. It’s not important enough.” We changed my Values Hierarchy and the next week, I started to make money.

Maybe you’re wondering how moving a value higher up in the hierarchy could change my results? Values dictate our behaviour. Suddenly my behaviour around money changed. And my belief in the value of what I was doing changed.

If you’re not making the money you want, chances are, your Values do not support your goals.

Now let’s say you have a company with a team of people working for you. What if, the individual values of each team member are not in alignment with the company values? What kind of results would your business be achieving? Not the ones you want.

When we elicit the values for the company or the team, we can align them so that everyone is in alignment, moving towards the same common purpose, and with the same values in the context of the business.

Imagine, for a moment, you’re working with a team of people all valuing the same thing. Really believing it. Really down in their core. Not an imposed set of values that you put on the wall that sound good, but real values. What do you think that would do for your business when everyones values are in alignment?

The business starts to become much more productive like a smoothly oiled machine.

Or, how about if you’re a solopreneur and you work on your own, how about when your values are in alignment for you? And you really know where you’re going and your unconscious mind has a clear direction of what’s important to you and the direction that you’re going in. What do you think that would do for your business? Because what I see happening when I work with my clients is that It’s like having a bow and arrow and hitting the target every single time. Suddenly you find that sweet spot where you hit the target every time. So, values are important.

And what I find interesting is that when values are done “the other way” outside of NLP, I never see profit showing on people’s values. And I think to myself “is money not important to your business? And if money’s not important then why aren’t you a non-profit?”

I think that’s something to think about. What are your real values? If you’re interested in how we can work together to align your company’s values to increase productivity and create a more cohesive work environment, contact me at www.teriholland.ca.
​
The man’s wish was granted. That he could just write a short paragraph and what he wrote was, “Make good use of your time on earth. I cannot buy even one hour of life for three million pounds of gold dollars. Be sure to know in your heart what things in your life are of true value and place your attention there.”

Yours in Health and Prosperity,

PS. If you enjoyed this blog post, share it with a friend and leave a comment below.